This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
True religion is not what men see and admire; it is what God sees and loves... The cheerful consecration of all the powers of the soul; the worship which rising above all outward forms, ascends to God in the sweetest, dearest communion - a worship often too deep for utterance, and than which the highest heaven knows nothing more sublime.
Consecration | God | Heaven | Men | Nothing | Religion | Soul | Wisdom | Worship | God |
We live in the midst of infinite existence; and widely as we can see, and vastly as we have discovered, we have but crossed the threshold, we have but entered the vestibule of the Creator’s temple. In this temple there is an everlasting worship of life, an anthem of many choruses, a hymn of incense that goes up forever.
The end of worship amongst men is power. For where a man seeth another worshipped, he supposeth him powerful, and is the readier to obey him; which makes his power greater. But God has no ends: the worship we do him proceeds from our duty and is directed according to our capacity by those rules of honor that reason dictateth to be done by the weak to the more potent men, in hope of benefit, for fear of damage, or in thankfulness for good already received from them.
Capacity | Duty | Ends | Fear | God | Good | Honor | Hope | Man | Men | Power | Reason | Thankfulness | Wisdom | Worship | God |
The Indian... sees his music as indistinct from his dancing and his dancing as indistinct from his worship and his worship as indistinct from his living.
Emil G. Hirsch, fully Emil Gustav Hirsch
The aim of our worship is the purification, enlightenment, and uplifting of our inner selves.
Enlightenment | Wisdom | Worship |
Emil G. Hirsch, fully Emil Gustav Hirsch
True worship is not a petition to God: it is a sermon to our selves.
The problem of our purpose is a religious problem... Our purpose is derived from faith and is imposed onto reality by our own souls. But faith and religious truth themselves are not absolute. They are relative. Thus the answers one gives to questions about the purpose of life must necessarily be relative to a time, a place, a tradition... To know and worship God means, in Baha’ullah’s words, to promote the unity of the human race and to foster the spirit of love and fellowship amongst men”... Someday there will be a global society in which humanity will realize its spiritual and moral potential... The destiny of mankind, actually, is the ultimate creation of the world civilization. It is only in the service of such a cause that I find the meaning and purpose of life.
Absolute | Cause | Civilization | Destiny | Faith | Global | God | Human race | Humanity | Life | Life | Love | Mankind | Meaning | Means | Men | Purpose | Purpose | Race | Reality | Service | Society | Spirit | Time | Tradition | Truth | Unity | Will | Wisdom | Words | World | Worship | Society | God |
Josephus, fully Titus Flavius Josephus, aka Joseph ben Matthias or Matityahu NULL
Everyone should worship God in accordance with the dictates of his own conscience, and not under constraint.
Conscience | Constraint | God | Wisdom | Worship | God |
Worship is the earthly act by which we most distinctly recognize our personal immortality; men who think that they will be extinct a few years hence do not pray. In worship we spread out our insignificant life, which yet is the work of the Creator’s hands... before the Eternal and All-Merciful, that we may learn the manners of a higher sphere, and fit ourselves for companionship with saints and angels, and for the everlasting sight of the face of God.
Angels | Eternal | God | Immortality | Life | Life | Manners | Men | Will | Wisdom | Work | Worship | Companionship | Learn | Think |
C. Wright Mills, fully Charles Wright Mills
As a social and as a personal force, religion has become a dependent variable. It does not originate; it reacts. It does not denounce; it adapts. It does not set forth new models of conduct and sensibility; it imitates. Its rhetoric is without deep appeal; the worship it organizes is without piety. It has become less a revitalization of the spirit in permanent tension with the world than a respectable distraction from the sourness of life.
Conduct | Force | Life | Life | Piety | Religion | Rhetoric | Sensibility | Spirit | Wisdom | World | Worship |
Metastasio, aka Pietro Petastasio, pseudonymn for Pietro Antonio Domenico Trapassi NULL
O, how full of error is the judgment of mankind. They wonder at results when they are ignorant of the reasons. They call it fortune when they know not the cause, and thus worship their own ignorance changed into a deity.
Cause | Error | Fortune | Ignorance | Judgment | Mankind | Wisdom | Wonder | Worship |
Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
Every one's true worship was that which he found in use in the place where he chanced to be.
All true prayer is worship – the ascription of worth to the Eternal. Without adoration, thanksgiving may become a miserliness, petition a selfish clamor, intercession a currying of special favors for our friends, and even contemplation may turn into a refined indulgence.
Contemplation | Eternal | Indulgence | Prayer | Worship | Worth | Contemplation |